Violating time : history, memory, and nostalgia in cinema / edited by Christina Lee.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lee, Christina, 1976-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Time in motion pictures.

Memory in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

ix, 241 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Continuum, 2008.

Summary:

Violating Time explores "time" as a defining factor influencing our experiences and knowledge of events. Employing the metaphor of cinema as time machine, the book discusses the narrative and aesthetic possibilities opened up by disruptions to linear temporal logic. The authors investigate how tactical remembering and forgetting can destabilize narratives to create new geographies of time and space which can, quite literally, alter the course of history.

Violating Time draws from a spectrum of genres such as documentary, historic recreations, and science fiction. It argues that fictional and nonfictional representations of the past and projections of the future are not isolated commentaries of yesterday or tomorrow. Rather, they evoke our current cultural preoccupations; whether it is skepticism of nostalgia, the desire to rewrite history and travel through time, or post-millennial fears of disappearing memories and loss of identity. The book includes analyses of such films as The Filth and the Fury, All The President's Men, Run Lola Run, The Royal Tenenbaums, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Donnie Darko, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and 2046.

Contents:

1 "The Cracks Between": Cinematic and Proto-Cinematic Counter-Memories of the American Civil War / Zoe Trodd 12

2 Our Impossible Failings: The Rhetoric of Historical Representation, Ideology, and Subjectivity in Ken Burns' Jazz / J. A. Rice 26

3 "Zero Percent Chance of Rain": The Watergate History and All The President's Men / Pamela L. Kerpius 40

4 Staying for Time: The Holocaust and Atrocity Footage in American Public Memory / Steven Alan Carr 57

5 Nostalgic Travels through Space and Time: Good Bye, Lenin! / Roger F. Cook 70

6 The Temporal/Spatial Logic of Japanese Nationalism: The Narrative Structure of Film and Memory / Michael Sugimoto 88

7 Remembering a Film and "Ruining" a Film History: On Tian Zhuangzhuang's "Failure" to Remake Spring in a Small Town / Yiman Wang 104

8 "We'll Always Have Hong Kong": Uncanny Spaces and Disappearing Memories in the Films of Wong Kar Wai / Christina Lee 124

9 "No Future for You": The Sex Pistols and the Politics of Cinematic Reimaginings / Adam Trainer 142

10 The American Family (Film) in Retro: Nostalgia As Mode in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums / Daniel Cross Turner 159

11 Manifesting a Mutant Past in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind / Michael Pigott 177

12 When People Run in Circles: Structures of Time and Memory in Donnie Darko / James Walters 191

13 What a Difference a Day Made: Database Narratives and Avatar Subjectivities in the Alternate-Reality Film / Chuck Tryon 208.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes filmographies.

ISBN:

9780826429414

0826429416

OCLC:

232327332